1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a speaker device and an apparatus associated therewith.
2. Description of Related Art
Recent years have seen the widespread use of a flat-screen television receiver using a LCD (a liquid crystal display) or a PDP (a plasma display panel). A commonly used type of flat-screen television receiver has a front cabinet, a rear cabinet, and a speaker. The front cabinet includes a rectangular front portion and a side wall portion that is provided so as to stand rearward from each of four sides of the front portion. The rear cabinet covers a rear surface side of the front cabinet. The speaker is mounted to the front cabinet and outputs sound.
In the flat-screen television receiver described above, in order to achieve a simple appearance thereof from its front, a hole for passing sound from the speaker therethrough is often formed at a location (such as the side wall portion) in the front cabinet, which is not viewable from the front. The speaker is disposed such that a sound output opening thereof, from which a diaphragm is exposed, is opposed to the hole formed at the side wall portion of the front cabinet. In this case, a gasket is interposed and fixed between a flange portion of the speaker and the side wall portion.
Furthermore, JP-A-2007-124294 discloses a speaker device that, instead of using a gasket, houses a speaker in a holder.
One reason why, as described above, a periphery of a front surface of the diaphragm of the speaker is covered with a sound blocking member such as a gasket is to prevent audio in positive phase outputted from a front surface of the speaker and audio in negative phase outputted from a rear surface of the speaker from cancelling out each other. By the basket and the cabinet, audio in negative phase is blocked from travelling toward the front surface of the speaker.
In a case of using a gasket made of cardboard or foam resin, however, at the time of assembly, the gasket is slid in a state of being pressed against the front cabinet, which causes interlayer delamination of the cardboard or collapse of the foam resin. Such situations result in generation of abnormal sound. Furthermore, typically, a gasket is manufactured by stamping, and thus manufacturing thereof requires great care and is wasteful in a sense that residual material left after stamping is discarded. A holder, on the other hand, needs to be molded of an elastic body such as rubber and thus is costly.